


The Manner To Which We Are Accustomed

by GretchenSinister



Series: Chocolate Shop AU [6]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:13:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21624334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: Original Prompt: "Set after the film: Pitch is weak, vulnerable, and unconscious, and Jack can’t help himself. Things get a bit awkward when Pitch wakes up feeling very confused, but in the end he has no objections.Lots of feels. Please be vague/metaphorical about the actual sex act (am squeamish); keep it mostly about kissing/touching, but otherwise have fun with it."I set this in the Chocolate Shop AU. Takes place after all the shit’s gone down and all that’s left is rubble. Just kissing.Other titles in the AU:A Fine BladeChocolate ShopThe Brightest Thing In The Room
Relationships: Jack Frost/Pitch Black
Series: Chocolate Shop AU [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1557643
Kudos: 17
Collections: Blackice Short Fics





	The Manner To Which We Are Accustomed

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr on 6/23/2014.

And wonder. Of wonders. Jack crouches by the piles of rubble that were once a fine house, see the gilt sticking up through the broken bricks and plaster dust, broken walls spilling horsehair out to be covered in snow, strange soil for golden cabbage-rose chandeliers to grow from, and yet they do, watch the broken-crystal thorns. He likes the house like this, it’s easier to see what it’s about. But the bricks and mortar and torn singed velvet aren’t the only pieces of rubble here, for wonder of wonder that pile of rubble in a black wool coat pale with plaster and dark with blood, that pile of rubble still could make a sound or two on its own, still could make a move or two on its own. The pile of rubble flexes its black-gloved hand to push away a fine sharp blade, curious thing, very stained, no handle.  
  
Jack throws out a laugh into the still air; the snowflakes drifting by melt with his breath but the ash doesn’t. “So you’re still alive, you.” There’s nothing he wants to call the rubble, not now. And maybe the rubble wouldn’t even call itself Pitch, now. Now. Now. Now is different from then, even if the ash hasn’t settled yet.  
  
Jack kicks away some bricks from the wool-coated rubble, heaves away the heavy oak door he had used to hide from the explosion, and looks down at him again. “Didn’t you know you were bleeding out? Lord almighty, and you’re the only one who survived, I’ll bet.”  
  
The rubble groans and Jack kneels down, turns him over, gently so gently. He pulls him free from the rest of the rubble, the rubble that’s definitely not getting back up instead of only maybe, and props him up against a piece of wall, scorched-silk wallpaper flaking away on the shoulders of his black coat.  
  
“Probably shouldn’t move you too much right now, should I?” The rubble leans against him. “Thought not.” Jack wraps his arm around the rubble’s shoulders. “Ah, you.” The coat is dark and sticky over his abdomen. “Why didn’t you leave it in, you? You know you’re supposed to. And you must have wanted to survive, what with the door. No hard feelings, though? I needed…I needed to give it back that way, you. On account of how I was given it.” He toes at the blade, a very fine blade indeed.  
  
He laughs again. “Was going to ask the general air and ash how we ended up this way, and if we needed to end up this way, but that’s nonsense, isn’t it? If we were any different, even a bit, we’d be horrified, wouldn’t we, at all this? But we aren’t. We aren’t.” He digs a flask out of his own once-blue coat. It sloshes with an inch or two of the last good vodka within five hundred miles. “Here, you,” he says, unscrewing the cap and tipping a little into the rubble’s mouth. “Here’s a toast to us, in the manner to which we are accustomed.”  
  
The rubble looks up at him through just-barely opened eyes, and Jack sighs. “The manner to which we are accustomed.” He smiles a little and tilts his head down, meeting the rubble’s lips gently so gently, breathing warmth into his mouth like he never did when the rubble was Pitch. He kisses him again and again, slow and sweet like he’s learned, genuine like he’s learned, genuine yes, even now, because now is now and then was then. And so what if he tastes like blood and dirt and vodka, all those things are honest and so is Jack, so is the rubble kissing back.  
  
“Why?” The rubble says hoarsely when Jack pulls back for a moment. “Why…treat me this way? After…”  
  
“Because it _is_ after, ever so after,” Jack says, waving the flask at the ash-snow-silent world. “And I liked you, you. You wouldn’t have gotten me at all if I hadn’t.” He kisses him again, and the rubble clutches weakly at his coat. “And you like me,” he says softly.  
  
“I do,” the rubble whispers. “You’re going to let Pitch die in these ruins,” he says.  
  
Jack passes him a little more vodka. “Yeah.” He leans closer to the rubble. “But keep your coat pressed to where I stabbed you. I think…I think I know how to get somewhere where they understand this isn’t a fucking chessboard.”  
  
The ash settles, and the snow comes down, and when Jack’s contact shows up in a stolen haycart, full of hay, even, he doesn’t say a word as he helps them curl up together in the back, but then again, he rarely does.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments from Tumblr:
> 
> tejoxys said: Gahhh and it left off sort of hopeful. This AU keeps getting better. ;__;


End file.
